Sleep deprivation. It explains all the symptoms mentioned in the article.
Kids in kindergarten start early, and stay later than they have in the past with no nap period. Busy parents (both of whom are now working full-time) are lucky to get home by 7pm, so the kid(s) are generally kept up till 9/10pm so the parents can have some time with them.
If parents are going to keep a 5/6-yr old up to 9:30pm or later, then wake them up at 7:15am to get ready for school at 8:15am.... which goes till 2pm with no nap time. Well yea, sleep deprivation hurts.
Ask your parents, grandparents, etc when they went to sleep, when kindergarten began, how long it ran, whether it included a nap/rest-time. Most of us got a lot more sleep than the kids now.
Edit: I agree kids need more free-play time, but that's separate from their sleep deprivation.
It's likely that there are many factors at work. You'll hear everything from changes in diet, too much TV, too much social media, too much time in front of the iPad, etc.
As an anecdote to perhaps corroborate yours, it felt impossible for me to get up at 7am every morning M-F from the ages of 9-22. It also felt highly unnatural to be doing so at all, as a majority of my friends experienced the same thing -- a very shifted sleep schedule which started later in the evening and lasted 8+ hours into almost noontime. Of course this could all be due to too much TV, too much social media, too much iPad, etc.
As for the article, play seems central to development. It certainly plays a role in bonding formation[1] and neural development[2]. However, just like every other factor, it's just hard to suss out its relative weight compared to everything else a child experiences during development.
My personal view is that this is all very speculative. When we can model the brain better, whether it's through more carefully controlled studies or even through machine intelligence simulations, we will actually be able to determine its real value. Though, I do suspect its high.
This really blows my mind if it's what's happening. Are you saying that kindergartens are getting rid of 'nap times'?!?!
Why would they do this?!?!
I thought it was obvious that children need sleep in order to learn and grow.
Secondly even if I put on a tinfoil hat I can't see even a financial incentive for getting rid of naps. That's down time that kindergarten teachers get to relax in the relative quiet and organize things.
So what possible rationale is there for getting rid of nap time?
The rationale I've seen, in the public schools in my area, is to cram more reading and writing into the day. They eliminated nap time, and have alternating recess - mornings for 30 minutes one day, afternoons the next.
If your child can't read and write their own name by the time they get to kindergarten, they are considered behind age appropriate. This isn't an affluent area of the US, either. It's a rural, poor area.
The quest to test is what's eliminating all 'extra' times in schools. We have to beat China, Korea and all of Europe on standardized dick measuring tests, so our children get to suffer (unless you can afford alternate private schools like forest schools or something similar).
I hated naptime when I was at preschool, I could never get to sleep.
Although it's possible I'm just misremembering, and I got to sleep just fine most of the time and only remember the times I lay awake thinking about how I hated naptime.
Maybe the parents who are paying big money for kindergarten feel like they're getting shortchanged if their child isn't being educated the entirety of their time there, and this has led to pressure to reduce or eliminate nap time?
I didn't have nap time in school, I had to go to bed at 7 instead (with school starting at 9). Nap time is only needed if your night time is too short, IMO.
My sons kindergarten don't have nap times for practical reasons. It's a forrest kindergarten, so they spend all/most their time in the woods. I suppose they could bring a tent or sleeping bags, but it gets rather cold during winter.
That probably doesn't answer your question directly, but it may be for similar practical reasons this is happening elsewhere (if it is - I don't know).
I lived quite far from school in my middle and high school days. It meant an hour long bus ride both ways (plus a 1.5 mile walk from the bus stop), and having to wake at 5AM to get ready.
The only way I had any free time was staying up late, which occurred every single school night. I got horrendous grades because focusing was impossible.
I actually blame this single circumstance for a large share of my life problems. It forced me to work my way up from a crappy community college after high school, and everyone I encountered just sort of assumed I was mediocre.
In the book Nurtureshock (must read for any parents, IMO), sleep deprivation is considered as #1 cause for all evils. Many schools forces teenagers to wake up as early as 6AM and they typically can't go to bed before 11Pm. This is loss of 2 hours of sleep each day for brains that are still developing. Result is colossal drop in grades along with other artifacts. Schools do this to accommodate different grades in same building. Lot of schools have fixed this slightly after this book came out by making teenagers start late and kindergartens start early.In my view, it should be unlawful to have schools start before 9AM for any grades.
I think you're 100% correct here. My son is in bed by 8, no exceptions. Usually up around 8 the next day. My niece is in preschool from 7a-6p... Totally different experience which really sucks.
When I was that age, 8:00 meant that either Topo Gigio or the Muppets were on Ed Sullivan (they were always, for some reason, scheduled for the second half-hour). I'm not sure I needed the extra half-hour that going to bed at 7:30 gave me, but I'm pretty sure that my parents needed the recovery time before their two hours of grown-up television.
Schools in our area started at 7am for k and first grade. Some required taking a bus around 530-6. So my kids would be getting up at 4 something.
Screw that. I went to the school, picked a teacher I liked, hired her as a governess. Setup a room attached to the house as a classroom. Now school starts at 9am and it's much healthier. They sleep as much as they want, basically. (9-10 hours). Been doing it for a couple years now. Other parents have begged us to take their kids on.
A family with two developers' incomes could easily pay the equivalent of a teacher's salary in many places. Teachers are underpaid for what we expect them to do, so it should be unsurprising that some teachers underperform -- the highly qualified who lack intense passion leave.
Kids in kindergarten start early, and stay later than they have in the past with no nap period. Busy parents (both of whom are now working full-time) are lucky to get home by 7pm, so the kid(s) are generally kept up till 9/10pm so the parents can have some time with them.
If parents are going to keep a 5/6-yr old up to 9:30pm or later, then wake them up at 7:15am to get ready for school at 8:15am.... which goes till 2pm with no nap time. Well yea, sleep deprivation hurts.
Ask your parents, grandparents, etc when they went to sleep, when kindergarten began, how long it ran, whether it included a nap/rest-time. Most of us got a lot more sleep than the kids now.
Edit: I agree kids need more free-play time, but that's separate from their sleep deprivation.